


Bill Weasley & the Really Strange Day

by taran



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Archaeology, Crossover, Gen, Gen Fic, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 20:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10838979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taran/pseuds/taran
Summary: “Why didn't you tell me that you're a bloody wizard?”“Because I'm not!”“...what?”In which Bill Weasley makes friends with a Japanese archaeologist on a dig site in Egypt, and he's most definitely a muggle up until the exact moment that he's not, apparently.





	Bill Weasley & the Really Strange Day

If Bill is nosy, it is his mother's doing. Inexplicably, this is the thought repeating over and over again in his brain as he and a very vocally upset owl are descended upon by the image of horrified confusion.

 

“Bill Weasley! What are you doing to that bird?”

 

Of course, if he hadn't snooped he would never have known that his best friend on-site was not only too clever (and secretive, in Bill's opinion) for his own good; not only the youngest and currently most talked about up-and-coming archaeologist in his field; not only  _ fucking brilliant _ ; but also-

 

“-a bloody wizard?!”

 

“What?” Yugi pauses and blinks at Bill, rather owlish himself. By this time Bill has managed to wrestle the frantically hooting owl finally,  _ finally,  _ into submission and spits a feather out of his mouth _. _

 

_“_ Why didn't you tell me,” he enunciates again, breathing heavily, “that you're a _bloody_ _wizard_?”

 

“Because I'm not!”

 

The owl wriggles out of his suddenly loose hands and with one, two flaps lands on Yugi's shoulder. Bill stares, his head of steam stuttering down. His voice comes out a squeak.

 

“...what?”

 

~~

 

Bill met Yugi Mutou, officially, on the sixth of February whilst covered head to toe in dust and seriously considering seeking different employment. His first job in Egypt had been an experience and a half, two plus years before. He had learnt more about sand, ancient curses, sun protection spells, and camel spiders (dear Merlin, never again) in those three months than in the entirety of his life up to that point. It had been an adventure and, frankly, the tomb they had been de-cursing had already been found, dug up, cracked open to the first ward, and left otherwise untouched, just ripe for some curse-breaking.

 

The actual finding of cursed things, Bill was discovering, was not nearly as exciting as all that.

 

Or rather, he was  _ waiting _ to find cursed things. Egypt, while replete of tombs, treasure, and adventure in his mind, in reality is bloody huge. They haven't exactly been tripping over sarcophagi left and right. Watching the dozens of careful workers bent over like reeds, slowly, slowly brushing sand and dust away from what to him appears to be nothing more than pitted sandstone, Bill can't fight the feeling that he has woken up into the same day as yesterday. Or the one before. All the ones before, really, since arriving on-site.

 

One fiasco, he broods as he squints against the ever-brightening sun. One fiasco in which a group of Muggle archaeologists finds a cursed tomb in the area. And after all the dust and Obliviates have settled, his team has to come in and sit around with their wands up their arses waiting for something to happen that might not. Muggle tents, Muggle clothes, and a lot of dust. All that in itself isn't so bad, Bill can admit. He sometimes wears Muggle clothes out of preference, and he wears them well. And after a few nights in a Muggle tent, the expanded Wizard-space duplexes that before had seemed so average start to seem ridiculous. After a week, he's grown rather fond of his little space (though not opposed to putting up a couple cooling charms from the start.)

 

No, the worst part of it all, besides the waiting and the boredom and the limit on magic, is the creeping discovery that sun protection charms only last so long after a morning application. And that it's really, truly impossible to get away to recast when the entire site fairly crawls with Muggle workers.

 

“You're an absolute tomato, Weasley!” Beringer declares in greeting on his way past just after Bill has come in for refreshments half way through the morning. Predictably, he lands a slap on Bill's back like he has done every morning for years. Acclimated, Bill doesn't even sway, though the sting makes him wince.

 

“Sod off,” Bill grumbles, and glares as his senior adviser laughs his way into the spicy shade of the  canteen tent. It already smells fantastic, like a market in the sun, and for all he's miserable Bill feels his mouth water. He stares longingly into the shade where Beringer triumphantly receives a cup of fresh tea from one of the workers on kitchen duty.

 

“Best invest in some protection, lad,” Beringer continues cheerily, and drains half his mug in one go. His moustache twists down at the corners, giving the impression of sentience and in a way that suggests he can just barely control a grin. It's his sense of humour that Bill usually appreciates about him as a colleague. Now, though, Bill considers strangling him. In response to the look Bill shoots his way, Beringer pointedly pats a hand on his wide-brimmed hat, to which Bill replies with an equally pointed hand motion.

 

“Excuse me,” a voice from behind him rises lightly over Berginer's barking guffaws. Bill turns and stares for lack of a better reaction. Apparently unaffected by his appalling rudeness, the stranger soldiers on, “I noticed that you're burning very badly. Did you forget sunscreen?”

 

“Er--,” Bill fumbles as his brain searches for some kind of fib. How long does sunscreen last, anyway? Does it wear off like a protection charm? Thankfully, the vaguely familiar man smiles and holds out a bright orange bottle before he can blurt out anything too obviously, well, obvious.

 

“I did on my first dig,” he says, smile friendly and just this side of self-deprecating. “I looked a bit like you do.”

 

Bill looks skeptically at his very tanned forearms even as the sunscreen changes hands. He must have broadcast his thoughts, because the man laughs and shrugs.

 

“I've been on a few more since then,” he admits, twisting his forearms in front of him and examining them as if just realizing it for himself. “The sunscreen helps.”

 

Between the two of them, they manage to get him relatively slathered with the stuff by the time someone comes searching to put Bill back to work. Between carefully brushing sand from old packed floors pitted with hearths and the impression of supports and breaking for water, shade, or lunch, Bill sees the still-nameless stranger a handful of times. He never manages to get close enough to talk again, not until later that night. Dinner on the dig is doled out of pots and baskets full of bread to workers and scholars camped out around three different fires. They fairly bombard the area with sound and smell; cinnamon, sweat, beer, onions, bread, and cumin, stirred together like in the belly of a big cauldron.

 

“I don't see why you bother,” Beringer argues stolidly for the third night in a row, scooping spiced lentils into his mouth with a flat bread. Bill wonders if he purposefully forgets their past arguments to start anew each night for sport, but doesn't think to mention this around his own bite of bread. “We're here to sit around making sure the Muggles don't stick their noses into something nasty, to keep out of sight, and then leave when nothing turns up.” He wipes sauce from his mustache and grunts as he settles back against the bedroll he'd been using as an armrest. “Not a single ruddy word to spend eight hours a day brushing up dust. Couldn't pay me galleons to do any of this without a wand.”

 

“You're so old fashioned,” Bill responds with very little heat. Even he can admit it's slow, back breaking work. No one can deny that it would go faster with magic. “Besides, it's better than sitting around doing nothing for weeks.”

 

He doesn't say it to Beringer, but he thinks it's fascinating working with the Muggle archaeologists, hearing them talk about pot sherds, living floors, and some sort of machine that can spit out the exact dated age of the charred remains they had found of a fire. It boggles his mind to think of all the things some of the Muggles seem to be doing and learning, and Bill can only imagine what his dad's reaction would be. He'd probably want to be there himself, marvelling at the field showers and the gas stoves.

 

“May I sit here?”

 

The stranger from before smiles at him in apparent shyness as Bill glances up at him and belatedly realizes he’s been grinning absently to himself. He holds a mess bowl filled with lentils and roasted aubergines and three flat breads wrapped in a napkin slowly going limp with oil. His nose is a bit pinker for the day, but the friendliness in his round eyes is the same. Bill hurries to shift over on the woven mat to make room, and even with him sitting on the very edge they end up shoulder to shoulder. It's better than having sand pour down the back of his trousers, at any rate. Bill holds out his hand once they've both settled.

 

“Thanks for the sunscreen before,” he says when mid-tone eyes, maybe brown, blink from face to hand and back again in the half light. “Bill Weasley. I'm with the British team.”

 

“It was nothing, really. Yugi Mutou,” and he shakes Bill's hand with a small rough palm. “I'm here through the Department of Archaeology and University of Tokyo.”

 

“Tokyo?” Bill blurts, eyebrows shooting up. “I didn't realize you were part of the Japanese team. Your English is very good.” 

 

“Ah, not really,” Yugi mumbles, and waves his hands in front of his face like it will hide that it had become mysteriously flushed. “It's required in Japanese schools, so I have learned for years.” 

 

“Useful, that. We never learned anything like that when I was in school,” Bill says a little ruefully. His Arabic is rudimentary from work, his Latin, too. He certainly wouldn't be holding any conversations in either any time soon. For all that he’s fluent, Gobbledegook he definitely can't mention for different reasons. “I don't suppose I really need any other language while I'm here. People just point at the square where they want me and I play in the dirt for a few hours.”

 

Yugi laughs, and on his other side Beringer rumbles something like, “Your own ruddy fault,” under his breath.

 

“Field work is hard work,” Yugi agrees, politely waving away a canteen worker making a second round with a pot of something that smells of cooked tomatoes and spices. Bill takes his share instead.

 

With dinner being served, their fire gradually fills up with a grab-bag sampling of Japanese, British, Egyptian, and Icelandic bodies, perhaps one of the strangest mixes Bill has ever been a part of. Muggles rub elbows with witches and wizards he works with who now look deflated in their loose white linens, shirts, and khakis when he knows for a fact many of them prefer loudly colored, multi-layered robes for their day to day. Nearby, a group made up of Sikh scholars and university students in brightly coloured turbans play a card game against a couple of very sun burned, very drunk Icelandic archaeologists a few heads down. Two Japanese archaeologists shoot back and forth in a very fast and polite conversation that he can't begin to understand. At his elbow, Beringer talks up a pretty archaeologist in a tie-dye headscarf. New faces pop in and away from the other fires, rowdy and exhausted and every one of them in need of a good bath after the days' work. Bill himself is one of them. 

 

“Yugi!” 

 

One of the younger workers, a student Bill would wager, calls out in Arabic to Bill's casual companion. He speaks fast, excited, and Bill can't catch a word of it outside of some basics--  _ we _ ,  _ please _ , the sort. Yugi replies amiably, gently enough that Bill can catch  _ tomorrow _ (or was it  _ later _ ?) in there. Either way, when Yugi waves an apologetic hand, the dark-haired fellow visibly wilts but nods and ducks back towards the other fire. As he watches this unfold, Bill reaches into the rucksack at his side and pulls out a Cadbury chocolate bar he had been hoarding for the past week-- not as good as Chocolate Frogs, but not bad in a pinch. He rips the purple wrapper open messily.

 

“Arabic, too?” 

 

Half melted from the fire, the first square gets popped in to his mouth before he breaks off another, slightly more solid piece to offer Yugi, who looks a little unsure. He brightens slightly and nods (or bows, Bill supposes) his head slightly as he accepts it.

 

“Yes,” he agrees lightly, ducking his head, and then again, “That, too. Egypt has been my passion for years, so I learned to come abroad,” he explains.

 

Bill motions to where the student disappeared with a chocolatey finger, curious.

 

“What did he ask? He seemed disappointed.”

 

When Yugi smiles this time, it's with one shrugging corner of his mouth, but he doesn't duck his head away. “He asked that I play a card game with him. I said I would another time.” 

 

He leans back on his hands and tilts his head back, seeming to Bill to be much more relaxed than just a minute before. With the sunset barely a smudge of red behind his profile, his blonde fringe seems even stranger against the black of the rest of his hair and the bronze of his face. Momentarily, Bill is struck with the urge to introduce Yugi to his mum and put an end to the Molly Weasley War on (Her Children's) Unconventional Hair once and for all. Maybe the shock would be good for her. He smiles to himself and nibbles a bit of chocolate.

 

“So what do you think?” Yugi glances over at him, eyebrows drawn in. “A few living floors, some broken pots, ashes from a fire. Do you think we'll find anything else? Learn something new?”

 

“Of course!” 

 

Beringer looks over from his own conversation as Yugi sits bolt up. Bill straightens too, startled, as Yugi clenches a fist like he would fight on it. Bill thinks he's never seen anyone jump so quickly from content drowsing to passionately, bright-eyedly awake before. 

 

“What we've found is exciting already,” Yugi informs him, perhaps sensing some of his hesitance. “We learn so much from every sherd and stone, and the living quarters we find here are very new even to us. Archaeology has gained so much in the past two decades, the processualists and the post-processualists have each contributed so much. We are much more careful in studying the site bit by bit.” He nods once, and when he smiles it's firm-lipped and direct. “These sites are very promising. I know there is something more to find, but, if we go slowly, that's what is best. Don't you think?”

 

Bill fidgets slightly under the gaze Yugi directs at him.

 

“I don't know much,” he hedges. “And it's just a few house floors, right? Not like a temple or a tomb.” In his head, and in his memories of his last dig, Egypt is the glitter and lure of gold, jewels, ancient spirits, bright painted murals littered with secrets and expensive wooden chaises encrusted with mother-of-pearl. He is a little impatient to get back to that Egypt and leave the sweaty, dusty, pock-marked-stone-floors-and-pot-sherds one behind.

 

“Not at all,” Yugi counters, neatly nipping his fantasy in the bud. “That's why it's best.” He accepts another square of chocolate even as Bill makes a confused noise around a full mouth. (In England, his mother probably sits up, sensing his terrible manners.) Yugi chews his chocolate slowly before answering.

 

“In the past, archaeologists and adventurers were interested in the pyramids and monuments and tombs,” he explains. “It was like a dream, all the gold amulets, the painted murals, entire chambers of treasures,” and, boy, is Bill definitely not going to tell him that that's exactly what he was thinking moments before. He nods enthusiastically anyway, drifting back to the glitter of gold by wand light. Yugi makes an amused noise, maybe because Bill's face has gone dreamy and dopey. He's self-aware; he's not afraid to admit it. “It's everyone's desire to find them. But, it's not useful to study only those things. We know this now; focusing only on the exciting treasures is not good.

 

“The other finds are all treasures as well. The living floors, the midden piles, old hearths, they have so much to teach us because they are where the people lived and ate and worked. They show us what their lives were.” He points to the campfire in front of them, ringed with people eating, talking, dozing in their seats, all leaving behind empty plates, discarded hats, bones, canteens and utensils, and it's as if to say, 'like so.' “If we are careful, we can understand the people who were Egypt herself. We can begin to see them through the items left behind.”

 

“I suppose,” Bill hums, not entirely bought for the idea. Yugi nods again, to himself, and shifts.

 

Squatting lightly on the edge of the mat and doodling in the sand with his finger, he begins speaking in a tone not unlike a lecture. Bill leans forward to watch. As he speaks, the lines slashed and curved in the fire light begin to take on the recognizable spread of their site, its different foundations, walls, rooms, and midden piles. When he's finished, he points to a large room in one of the houses.

 

“This week we've found the hearth of this house and burned grains and plants. Pot sherds were found here and here,” the corner of the room, a smaller chamber connected through the north wall, “and in this room it is discovered a pit we believe is for storage that will be explored this week.” He sits back on his heels and glances at Bill, waving him closer to look. “We can send much of these to the labs and the scientists will tell us what foods the people were cooking and storing, if we're lucky. Were the pots full of beer, wine? Where were the pots from? If we look at the sherd thickness and temper along with its decoration style and its age, we can find out. Perhaps these sherds came from another known area. We can say nearly perfectly from where, if we already have the catalogue.”

 

A low whistle; another thing Bill had not known.

 

“No way,” he says, appreciative and honestly impressed.

 

Yugi smiles, looking like Puck with the firelight on one side of his face.

 

“Yes. And!” 

 

He points again at the house. Bill leans closer as the guiding finger skims from outlined room to outlined room.

 

“We can begin to understand the house and how the space was used. With more study, we can begin to understand how people survived, their trade and food and relationships. Were the people in these houses family? Extended? What was their work? We can place them in time to the rest of Egyptian sites, and form a map of Egypt, now including this site. It all connects together. See?” He flops back onto the mat and claps the sand from his hands. “This is Egypt. This is important, not the treasures. These lives here were Egypt.”

 

They watch the fire for a while in a mutual thoughtful silence. When Bill gets up to return his plate to the canteen, he pauses. Yugi blinks up at him while Bill grins.

 

“Let's hope to find some more pot sherds and hearths, then.” He holds out a hand. “It'll be a pleasure to work with you, Yugi.”

 

Yugi clasps his hand and grins.

 

“And you, Bill.”

 

~~

 

It would be another two weeks before Bill would discover that dogged, enthusiastic Yugi, uncomplaining no matter the menial or slow-going nature of the work, is actually one of the main scholars on the dig, invited by the Head of the Board of Archaeology herself when the dig was first suggested by University of Tokyo. Looking back at the time on how much Yugi had managed to teach him just through casual conversations while sifting excavated sand and debris through mesh frames or measuring and cataloguing post holes, Bill is not at all surprised, in hindsight. Due to his age, however, he had assumed him a student. Somehow, he seems too young to have already graduated which, from his little knowledge of Muggle schooling, is usually a lengthy process of years. Yugi is smart, though; he had realized that from the very first night by the fire.

 

Not to say he didn't react rather vocally, because, well, he  _ is _ a Weasley, and he honestly hadn’t known. Yugi, he could swear, stayed red for hours. It was half the fun of razzing and riling him up, so Bill didn’t feel too badly about it, especially when most of his insults had been of the complimentary sort.

 

No, Bill had realized early on into their newly forming friendship that Yugi was smart as well as passionate. He wouldn't realize just how deep that passion for Egypt runs-- not just the Egypt of the past, but the land here and now-- until the end of that second week. Still a little pink around the edges, Yugi hails him from across the site as the horn sounds to bring them all in for water and the end of the day. Bill waves at Beatty and Landry where they are placing the last few pot sherds of the day into their marked plastic bags and carefully picks his way over to where Yugi is doggedly emptying a bottle of water.

 

“Hey, Mr. Important On-Site Scholar,” Bill greets him, and is gratified when Yugi sputters the last of his drink. The few drops that make it to the sand disappear almost instantly as Yugi wipes his chin and gives one of his mild glares. Bill takes one look and laughs.

 

“Bill!” Yugi whines before his lip twitches at the corner as Bill manages to get his laughter under control. “I thought of taking one of the Jeeps down to the water. A couple of the portable showers have broken. The site manager suggested a few of us can't shower tonight.”

 

“And?” Bill tilts his head back to take a long gulp of cool water. Yugi shrugs.

 

“And I suggested she smell me.”

 

Bill nearly dies laughing. It's not the words, strangely enough; it's Yugi's wide, sincere eyes when he says it. Water goes all down his front as he bends over and resorts to laughing into his knee caps and gasping for air. When he is able to straighten up, Yugi is smiling a mild cat's smile, which Bill doesn't believe for a second. He plucks at the now slightly translucent linen of his shirt.

 

“Yeah, I'll go,” he decides, and Yugi brightens. “Though I've already had a bit of a shower, thanks.” He wipes his chin to the tune of Yugi's huff of amusement.

 

The Jeep, big and square and metal, gives a bumpy, dusty, and terrifying ride which leaves Bill silently wishing for a broom, but the end result is certainly gratifying. The late afternoon sun well over the horizon as yet casts a burning light on the Nile. It shimmers in the heat like bronze under a smith's hammer and seems to vibrate in Bill's dazzled eyes. Yugi stops the Jeep where the dirt road curls up closest to the green-matted bank and he points to a beaten section of the brush. 

 

Bill takes a few moments longer than Yugi to climb down and watches his friend as he trots down the path. After his legs have stopped shaking a bit, Bill tumbles down from his seat and follows. The air off the water presses against his face like a cool cloth and he can't help but sigh. A few meters down the slight slope he spots Yugi and slows to a halt.

 

His friend hasn't rolled up his linen trousers. It is, inexplicably, the first thing his brain registers. Yugi stands in the shallows, seemingly uncaring of the water soaking him to the knee, and as Bill watches he leans down to dip his hands into the river. Carefully, with an air of religious quiet, he presses his hands to forehead, chest, and leaning once more cups water into his hand to rinse his mouth. 

 

Where he stands, the river had over time eaten away a section of the bank, creating a calm, shallow pool swirling outside the pull of the main river. Against the gentle, bright waters, Yugi appears at once silhouetted, a dark figure, yet the white of his linen work clothes glows in the light. The scene leaves Bill unsure, loitering near the mouth of the path like a peeper. It lasts only a few moments, however. When Yugi notices him, he smiles and waves big, open arcs.

 

“It's nice!” He calls, “come in!”

 

Later, Bill asks as they float lazily in the calm shallows of the inlet, “Yugi? What were you doing, before?” He asks it quietly, afraid that maybe he shouldn't. Yugi seems to think for a moment, the evening insects creating a chorus in his silence.

 

“The Nile is the heart of Egypt,” he says finally, after a couple minutes had passed. He wipes sopping wet hair out of his face, chunks of blond and black intermingling. Bill wonders absently that even wet, he can't see the roots. Weren't Muggle dyes temporary, growing out over time? His distraction doesn't last, because Yugi asks, “Can't you feel? The Nile is Egypt, and Egypt is magic.”

 

In the long light, a heavy pause catches him up as the thought settles.

 

They end up splashing about for a few more carefree, lukewarm minutes before finally climbing out to wring and air dry. The night comes like many others had before.

 

In the end, Bill was sure he didn't quite understand whatever Yugi had tried to tell him then, or even what conception his friend could have of magic and how it compares to Bill's own, but he let it pass as a barrier in language and thought. What could a Muggle know about magic? And what could he, an English Wizard and an amateur archaeologist, know about Egypt or the Nile? 

 

~~

 

Bloody sodding magic, indeed.

 

“I don't-” Bill sighs out a sharp breath, pinching at the bridge of his nose where a migraine perches wasp-like. Even moving into the shade of Yugi's tent hasn't helped. “I don't understand. The Japanese authorities couldn't just have  _ not _ told us about- about other,” he motions broadly, angrily, though he wasn't sure why. Hell, he doesn't even know what to call Yugi. Wizard? 

 

Yugi hums, eyes skimming across the parchment in his hands.

 

“If by authorities you mean a Japanese magic authority,” he replies with a vague tone, “they would not have said anything to your team.” His eyes flick up, murky in the shade and stark over the top of the letter, though Bill knows now that they are pale, almost purple in some lights. If they crinkle at the corners like from a smile, Bill purposefully does not notice. His temper feels frayed as it is. “I assume your team is made also of magicians.”

 

“Wizards,” Bill corrects him without thinking, and then promptly shuts his mouth. When Yugi's look turns just this shade of triumphant and maybe a little wondering, he reluctantly adds, “And only some of them. The others are Muggles.”

 

“Muggle?” Yugi repeats, mouth confused around the 'l'.

 

“Non-magic folk.”

 

“Ah.” He turns back to the parchment, reads a few more lines, looks up. “I am not here through any magic authority, nor am I aware of any government of magic that would know I am here in Egypt.”

 

Bill sits down on Yugi's cot hard, feeling a little punch drunk.

 

“You're here on Mugg- er, non-magic business?”

 

Yugi nods.

 

“But you  _ are _ a wizard,” he says, the beginnings of relief swelling up-

 

“No.” 

 

-and doused.

 

Bill runs his hands over his face, completely lost. He had been of half a mind to go to his higher-up and let him know of a breach of Secrecy up until a minute ago, and he is still considering it. If Yugi isn't a wizard but knows about magic but  _ didn't  _ know of their unit's presence on-site...

 

“How do you know about magic, then?” 

 

When Bill looks up to see his question land, Yugi is the one watching him sharply like some kind of betrayal has been dealt him. Bill just barely fights the urge to snap 'Well, me, too!' It would have sounded a little too much like something Ron would say in a tiff, and that comparison is enough to restrain him.

 

However, Yugi doesn't answer. He watches Bill, and Bill watches him watch him, and with the two of them thinking so hard Bill is surprised the tent doesn't just go up in flames. Enough time passes for the migraine to realize itself in full, and Bill is ready to reach for his wand when he throws up his hands and begins,

 

“Yugi! Just-”

 

“How much did you read?”

 

Bill pauses. Against the bustle seeping in from the camp through the flaps, the air inside the tent is preternaturally still. The skin between his shoulder blades itches, because this is  _ Yugi _ ; but all the same, he feels unsure.

 

Seeing the owl flying in to camp, a mottled grey thing he knew was not theirs, Bill hadn't been able to resist. He had reasoned with himself that he couldn't risk it flying into the more densely Muggle half of camp, but in the uncomfortable underbelly of the thought he knew it was an insatiable curiosity that was driving him. Nosiness, he dad would call it. The feeling of something similar in shape to guilt crawling in his stomach hadn't stopped him. He had caught the wing-tired thing, had even managed to remove and unroll the parchment for a few moments before the scandalized bird had decided to rearrange his face for him. He can feel a claw rake burning over his left cheek even as he recalls Yugi's confused, horrified face as he fell in on him and swept the bird away. Even as Bill and Yugi share looks now, the owl fluffs and preens pressed against the side of Yugi's neck. If an owl can look righteous, it does.

 

“Enough,” Bill says to his lap, his head suddenly too heavy and his neck suddenly too stiff to look up. Enough for what, he's not sure.

 

_ Dear Yugi, you-know-who wanted to write you right away. We're in London where we've discovered other magic-users.  _ He remembers that clearly. How could he forget after the way those words made his stomach drop out? “You-know-who.” It’s not, well,  _ Him _ . It wasn’t even capitalized the way the newspapers and journals do it. But, still. 

 

After that, it's words and phrases, floating in the vague proximity of a paragraph.  _ Diagon Alley _ and  _ village called Hogsmeade  _ stand out clear in his brain, too familiar to forget, and a fragment of sentence that made something in him shiver, reading  _ they don't know about us, don’t worry  _ and maybe  _ I'm sure of it.  _ Whoever they are, they felt need to send this letter to Yugi-- why? No matter how much he grasps for the unwinding threads of the memory, though, he can't seem to tie it all together save for the warning that seemed so inherent in the phrasing, the foreboding. His head feels like it's still spinning from that first moment, seeing Yugi’s name on the letter, not one of his team’s or his own.

 

And seeing Yugi look at him now, so serious, with so many lines forming between his eyebrows, it doesn't help. Yugi had been... safe, somehow. An open book. As much his friend as any Muggle had ever been, more-so even, and now-- -- -- this.

 

“You're a wizard,” Bill blurts. Yugi opens his mouth, but Bill rushes over his denial, pointing at his chest with a jab, “No, you- you're magic, somehow, is what I mean.” Maybe. “I don't know, you have different magic, right? Your friend was telling you about us, the British wizards, which means you...” Didn't know? All the air leaves Bill's lungs in a great, whistling gush. “Shit.”

 

“Bill?” Yugi definitely looks concerned now. Bill feels sick, like lead in his stomach. His voice comes out hollow.

 

“You didn't know. About us. Whoever wrote you that letter broke the Statute of Secrecy. I think?” His temples throb like a pitter-pattering children's rhyme,  _ one, two, three, four, I declare a wizard's war.  _ “But you're not a Muggle,” he points out, and it's still a question.

 

“I am not.” Slightly offended.

 

“But you're not a wizard.”

 

“No.”

 

“But you're magical.”

 

Yugi goes stony silent, face still. Bill groans.

 

“Listen, Yugi-” he begins, pleading, only for a tumult of voices from outside to drown him out. Instantly, Bill see’s Yugi’s focus shift as his eyes dart over to the tent flap. Yugi flashes a palm like to say 'later' and just like that springs from the tent. Cursing, Bill stumbles out after him and bats the canvas away from his face as he bursts out into the ringing daylight. He grabs the arm of the nearest worker.

 

“What's happening?” he shouts over the ruckus of raised voices. When that gets him no reply, he asks again in Arabic.

 

“Thieves,” the man replies, spits the word, really. “Treasure hunters,” he continues, and all Bill can catch after that is  _ digging  _ and  _ western edge _ and  _ gold _ before he's off like a charmed firework in that direction, running as hard as he can until sand is spraying the backs of his legs from his own heels. 

 

Tomb robbers, thieves, treasure hunters, they're all the same, flocking to archaeological sites to try and find something to sell. The way Muggle archaeologists talk about them, they might as well be murderers; the artefacts they remove are sold to the highest bidder, smuggled out to private collections, and the knowledge is taken that could have been gained. (“How  _ dare _ they remove them from their assemblages! An artefact loses so much of its academic value if no longer  _ in situ.  _ They are stealing knowledge from us all and from the world, all for a quick Galleon. Vultures!” he'd overheard at his last dig in a shockingly rare show of temper from one of the dig foremen.)

 

Three weeks on-site was enough to inform him as to how they would be handled. Everyone has stories of chasing scavengers off, being shot at with 'fire arms', even sometimes doing the shooting, taking warning shots into the air or simply making a show of force. The shotguns he has occasionally glimpsed leaning in tents across camp the past few weeks have left him no illusions of the preparedness of the teams. Even thinking this and knowing that he will be useless, Bill sees Yugi's recognizable silhouette twenty metres ahead of him, dashing in the direction where everyone seemed to be rushing, and knows. Magic or Muggle or secret keeper, Bill isn't going to let him run off alone.

 

There is a small gather of men next to one of the main Jeeps for the dig. At the centre of the talk is a young worker, sweating and out of breath and motioning widely. Yugi reaches them with a final two lengthy strides and, with a handful of words, scatters them. Bill watches him vault into the Jeep behind the wheel without even a glance for permission to his fellows. Gasping for hot, dry air, Bill makes it just as the young man hops into the passenger side. He dives into the back with two more men, archaeologists and high up in dig command if he remembers right. They glance at him, but before they can ask questions, questions he isn't sure he'd be able to answer, the Jeep rumbles, roars, and lurches forward in a spray of sand.

 

It is nothing comparable to the ride before, going down to the water with Yugi. They set off down the barest inkling of a road towards the western edge of the site with wheels jumping and spitting across the uneven terrain. White knuckled, Bill grips the shock bar overhead for dear life. The Jeep tops a rise in the road, the top of a dune, and for a moment the miscellaneous boxes, jugs, and tools in the back are airborne. It all clatters down when the wheels touch again. Bill can only wince as they batter his legs where he's crouched.

 

They cover the first kilometer in what feels seconds, then the next, a metal juggernaut burning hot in the sun. Bill leans forward to warn Yugi to lay off if he'd like to keep his back passengers, only to pause. The faint sound of the worker rambling directions in Arabic barely survives over the hiss and bark of sand and gravel on the underbelly of the vehicle. Bill's not sure Yugi hears any of it anymore. Jerking and heaving with the rest of them, Bill can barely see his face, turned away from him as it is. He's not sure he wants to. From his bare profile, he gets a sense of something quiet and furious, maybe in the tilt of his brows or the line of his lips pressed hard together. When he leans back, it's ostensibly to keep his balance, not to avoid seeing his friend's eyes, whatever they might look like.

 

The site itself is a sprawling mess of old, half-covered wall bases, living floors unsheathed and then hidden depending on from where the wind blows, and some old corrals for stock animals. Tucked into what used to be an old fill basin from when the Nile would inundate annually, it is part packed sand, part shifting dunes, and utterly unimpressive, even for someone there in the thick of it. But somehow, as they approach the very most edge, the arm of building remains tossed out into the sands, on the horizon a single dot begins to grow into the shape of an all-terrain vehicle like there own. Two flapping white dots with the flash-and-dip impressions of shovels in their hands. As if seeing them is worse than knowing, worse than hear-say, Yugi's foot on the gas plummets and they rocket towards the interlopers. The wave of sand that is kicked up when, deftly, their driver brakes and twists the steering wheel hard left is monumental. It's barely settled by the time Yugi leaps out.

 

Even from the back of the Jeep, struggling to clamber down, Bill can see they've found something. There is a flash-- bronze or gold or even lacquer, he can't tell-- fumbled hand to hand. They had watched them come as they worked. Even as Bill watches, one reaches for something in their truck. The movement is enough to give him pause, hand hovering over his wand hidden in a side holster, and he sees the same thought pass through all of his companions. 

 

Yugi does not stop.

 

“ _ Halt!” _

 

Bill jumps at the command. The voice that comes out of him booms, fallen into a register that Bill has never, not once, heard come from his friend. He barks something else short and knife-edged in Arabic, striding forward until only four metres separate him and the thieves. Bill sees the whites of their eyes widen and suppresses something-- not a shudder, but similar, energy crawling up his spine like heat lightning. The line of Yugi's shoulders, his stance. Just a look has his muscles bunching up in tense sympathy, ready for the fight he can see Yugi is ready for. Bill glances over at the archaeologists who had also climbed down from the Jeep and feels a jolt at the sight of a shotgun and a revolving pistol kept carefully in hand. They had come because they had weapons, he realizes. He hadn't grabbed one. The weight of his wand is enough comfort should the worst come to it.

 

Yugi hadn't grabbed one, either, his own voice pipes dimly in his mind. Yugi hadn't. There was nothing in his hands to protect him. At the thought, ice dumps itself into Bill's stomach.

 

Hours might as well have passed whilst he was struck by realization, Bill feels, but only seconds have. The tomb robber with the hand on some unknown weapon in the Jeep does not move. Yugi snarls--  _ snarls--  _ a command in Arabic, and then another. The tension palpably doubles in their sneakthieves. Bill catches nothing more than the basics and absolutely hates himself for being no better. But the archaeologists in his peripheral on his left is nodding, and when another speaks with a no-less stony tone, the hand that had disappeared into the sand-coloured Jeep raises a pistol. 

 

A ripple of movement goes through the gathered men, the two on either side of him shouting as one, gun muzzles nudging upward. Bill aborts a movement for his wand, cursing.

 

Yugi does nothing. He stares, and for Merlin's sake, Bill can't make out whatever expression he must be wearing. After a tense moment and shouts exchanged from both sides, Bill gathers that their gun-wielder sees the disadvantage against two firearms and, with little aplomb, tosses the pistol into the sand. Both his and his companion's hands go into the air in obvious surrender. The sigh of relief that leaves him never seems to end. 

 

Without further ado, Yugi strides forward, removes them of their shovels and the cloth sack into which whatever they had found had been stored, turns, and leaves. Without another word, strides off to the south into the dunes past their Jeep, mouth so tight that his lips have lost colour. Not a single one of them tries to stop him.

 

The tension ebbs after that. Bill watches, awaiting any sign of trouble, as the two are ushered away from the pit hastily dug and as a shotgun is removed from their car bed. Two more Jeeps from the dig arrive then and with a sense of practice and simmering, quiet anger, the robbers are given a two-team escort off of the dig site towards the nearest town. Whatever will happen to them after that, given warning or escorted to the police station, he doesn’t know. The entire affair takes no more than a bare twenty minutes to wrap up. It's only when Bill is sure that there will be no violence that he trudges out into the sands after Yugi.

 

After being so quick to rush to the spot and shout the bastards down, he doesn't seem to have moved since, Bill notes. When he comes around to finally have a clear view of him, Bill frowns. There's a tremor in him, from lips to clenched fists. The whipping winds of the drive over had tousled his dark hair into angry spikes and flyaways, streaked through with blonde tufts gone rogue from his fringe. There’s a wildness about him. Most startling, however, is the austerity of his unsmiling face. 

 

Three weeks and Bill has never seen him angry. It changes something in him, down to the eyes even. He hardly seems to notice Bill there, the sand dusting him from their drive, or even the sack of artefacts in his hand. He flinches when Bill clears his throat.

 

“Come on, Yugi,” he says quietly, the upset of their last conversation momentarily put aside. “Let's head back.”

 

Silent for a long moment, Bill would have assumed Yugi hadn’t been listening at all if not for the way his face was turned ever so slightly in his direction. He lets the silence sit, something that had been shaken around in his chest more patient than him, or simply more startled by this furious, withdrawn Yugi he had never before seen. He looks and has never seen before the white-knuckle fist wrapped tight around a twist of burlap. This was nothing of the person whom, while sharp, had remained patient as they argued. This, he realized, was something he did not completely understand happening.

 

The moment is broken when Yugi nods with an audible sigh and the tightness goes out of his shoulders like a sluice of ice melt rolling off. He doesn’t say anything, just turns. 

 

They make back for the jeep together, shoulder to shoulder over the sand.

 

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I've posted any kind of fanwork online, and it figures that my first upload to end the drought is a Harry Potter crossover. Honestly, it's terribly typical of me.
> 
> This fic started out as just a fun idea that came to me sometime around two years ago, probably when I was supposed to be taking notes in Archaeology 101. Being that I was a fourth year taking a first year course, I had brainspace to spare during those particular lectures (though to be fair, my professor did include a host of really great (see: terrible) archaeology puns in his powerpoints, and once dared a student to drop an 1,000 year old pot handle on the floor just to prove how durable those things are.) I started writing it, fizzled, picked it up again a half year after that, wrote a few pages, fizzled, etc. until here we are.
> 
> My love for ancient Egypt, archaeology, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Harry Potter combined with some of the knowledge I picked up in those classes led to this. (Any real archaeologists out there, I'm so sorry. I am terrible with remembering jargon and using it correctly, probably got some stuff wrong, and I've never been on an actual field site, so don't expect tons of accuracy here outside of what I could learn with butt squarely in chair. To anyone who can't call me out on my bullshit, know that liberties have been taken.) While not technically a one-shot, as this is not complete, this fic honestly doesn't have some huge overarching plot to fulfill and all my ideas about where to go with this are pretty vague save for a few points. While this is not my main project that I have been and will be working on in the future, it's very likely that when the bug bites again in the future, I'll be adding to this-- at least another two chapters to wrap things up.
> 
> Sorry for any bad grammar or misspellings, this hasn't been beta'd because I'm a big self-conscious baby and I just gotta post it here in one go or I'll chicken out. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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